β
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
β
β
AndrΓ© Gide (Autumn Leaves)
β
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
β
It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?
β
β
Mo Yan (Red Sorghum)
β
It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
β
Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
β
β
Yoko Ono
β
Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.
β
β
Lauren DeStefano (Wither (The Chemical Garden, #1))
β
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some devine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
β
β
Alfred Tennyson
β
You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
β
β
John Muir (The Mountains of California)
β
Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like
they're falling in love with the ground.
β
β
Andrea Gibson
β
Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."
[The Autumnal]
β
β
John Donne (The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose)
β
I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
β
Autumn...the year's last, loveliest smile."
[Indian Summer]
β
β
John Howard Bryant
β
I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair
I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see
For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green
I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know
But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien
β
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau
β
Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.
β
β
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories)
β
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."
[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]
β
β
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The American Notebooks)
β
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly
That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
β
I only sleep with people I love, which is why I have insomnia.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
The Waverley sisters hadn't been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
β
a wind has blown the rain away & the sky away & all the leaves away, & the trees stand. i think i, too, have known autumn too long.
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.
β
β
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
β
October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people's reaction to my trying to commit suicide.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.
β
β
Gabriel GarcΓa MΓ‘rquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
β
There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me than your smile...no sound sweeter than your laughter...no pleasure greater than holding you in my arms. I realized today that I could never live without you, stubborn little hellion that you are. In this life and the next, youβre my only hope of happiness. Tell me, Lillian, dearest love...how can you have reached so far inside my heart?
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
β
It is not seen as insane when a fighter, under an attack that will inevitable lead to his death, chooses to take his own life first. In fact, this act has been encouraged for centuries, and is accepted even now as an honorable reason to do the deed. How is it any different when you are under attack by your own mind?
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?
β
β
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
β
Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.
β
β
Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
β
Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.
β
β
Jim Bishop
β
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I still own my heart, which I know because it hurts so much.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
β
You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
β
Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.
β
β
Lauren DeStefano (Wither (The Chemical Garden, #1))
β
Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors...
Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat...
What then was music created for?
Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves?
I think I know.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
I am my heartβs undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
Awareness is the enemy of sanity, for once you hear the screaming, it never stops.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
β
β
Nora Ephron
β
Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.
β
β
Chad Sugg
β
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...
β
β
Dylan Thomas (Collected Poems)
β
What's the big fucking deal? Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out alright.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.
β
β
Joe L. Wheeler
β
At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters on CΓ©zanne)
β
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
β
β
Humbert Wolfe
β
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morningβs hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
β
β
Mary Elizabeth Frye
β
Why can I never go back to bed? Who's is the voice ringing in my head? Where is the sense in these desperate dreams? Why should I wake when I'm half past dead?
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
You're so easy to read but the book is boring me.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go...
β
β
Brock Thoene (Shiloh Autumn)
β
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
β
β
Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
β
She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1))
β
Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
β
β
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
β
Studies show that intelligent girls are more depressed because they know the world.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?
β
β
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
β
It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
β
Oh, and I certainly don't suffer from schizophrenia. I quite enjoy it. And so do I.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive.
β
β
Louisa May Alcott (Little Men)
β
I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (Jacob's Room)
β
I loved autumn, the one season of the year that God seemed to have put there just for the beauty of it.
β
β
Lee Maynard
β
The next time you face a room full of strangers . . . you might tell yourself that some of them are just friends waiting to be found.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
β
And falling's just another way to fly.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
β
But they love each other," Clary said, appalled. "Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?"
Luke looked toward the river, at the dark water moving slowly under the light of the autumn moon. "Sometimes, Clary," he said, "love just isn't enough.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
β
I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry.
I cried because you wouldn't let me speak.
I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine.
I shone because I thought you loved me...
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.
β
β
Wallace Stegner (Angle of Repose)
β
Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.
β
β
Emily BrontΓ«
β
Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
Selama dia bahagia, aku juga akan bahagia. Sesederhana itu.
β
β
Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
β
Studies show:
Intelligent girls are more depressed
Because they know
What the world is really like
Don't think for a beat it makes it better
When you sit her down and tell her
Everything gonna be all right
She knows in society she either is
A devil or an angel with no in between
She speaks in the third person
So she can forget that she's me
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
β
β
Robert Browning
β
Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)
β
Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.
β
β
RΓ©my de Gourmont
β
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds.
β
β
Matsuo BashΕ
β
Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Emily's Quest (Emily, #3))
β
But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.
β
β
Stephen King ('Salem's Lot)
β
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call βGodβs birdsβ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?
β
β
George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)
β
Beware the autumn people
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2))
β
I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.
Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven't said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.
β
β
Tove Jansson
β
That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.
β
β
Ray Bradbury
β
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
β
β
Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
β
Your face is my heart Sassenach, and the love of you is my soul
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
β
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.
β
β
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
β
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
β
β
Samuel Butler
β
The smile that flickers on a babyβs lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.
β
β
Rabindranath Tagore
β
I myself am not afraid of ghosts; I am afraid of people.
β
β
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
β
Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
β
β
Leo Tolstoy
β
Fall colors are funny. Theyβre so bright and intense and beautiful. Itβs like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.
β
β
Siobhan Vivian (Same Difference)
β
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
fool who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
β
β
Wendy Delsol (Stork (Stork, #1))
β
On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
β
Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you've got those autumn blues. And some...well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice. Like a short, torrid love affair.
β
β
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)
β
How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
β
β
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4))
β
Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
[Letter to Miss Lewis, Oct. 1, 1841]
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George Eliot (George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals)
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anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
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E.E. Cummings (Selected Poems)
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Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.
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Hal Borland
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From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
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Edgar Allan Poe (Alone)
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It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
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P.D. James (A Taste for Death (Adam Dalgliesh, #7))
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My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.
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Robert Frost
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Autumn leaves donβt fall; they fly. They take their time and wander on this, their only chance to soar. Reflecting sunlight, they swirled and sailed and fluttered on the wind drafts.
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Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
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He cried when I left, which I find to be standard male behavior.
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Emilie Autumn
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I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.
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Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)
β
I'm not stupid. I know exactly what's going on, and I'm not fighting it. If I have to go through this, I will glean from it any small benefit I can receive. I will not fight this. Bring it on. Bring on the cure. Bring on the fucking happy. I'm committed.
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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Once upon a time is now.
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Emilie Autumn
β
Seandainya masih ada harapan - sekecil apapun untuk mengubah kenyataan, ia bersedia menggantungkan seluruh hidupnya demi harapan.
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Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
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The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
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John Greenleaf Whittier
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History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever.
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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Apakah ada yang tahu bagaimana rasanya mencintai seseorang yang tidak boleh dicintai? Aku tahu. Hidup ini sungguh aneh, juga tidak adil. Suatu kali hidup melambungkanmu setinggi langit, kali lainnya hidup menghempaskanmu begitu keras ke bumi. Ketika aku menyadari dialah satu-satunya yang paling kubutuhkan dalam hidup ini, kenyataan berteriak di telingaku dia juga satu-satunya orang yang tidak boleh kudapatkan.
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Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
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The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.
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Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
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If leeches ate peaches instead of my blood, then I would be free to drink tea in the mud!
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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If I breathe you in and you breathe me out, I swear we can breathe forever. I swear Iβll find summer in your winter and spring in your autumn and always, hands at the ends of your fingers, arms at the ends of your shoulders and I swear, when we run out of forever, when we run out of air, your name will be the last word that my lungs make air for.
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Iain Thomas
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He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
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Henry James
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This is our time. Until that time stops - for one of us, for both β it is our time. Now. Will you waste it, because you are afraid?
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Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
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If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed...
I'll take fewer things seriously..
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places I've never been
I'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary ones
If I could live again - I will travel light
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll watch more sunrises ...If I have the life to live
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Anonymous
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Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.
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Federico GarcΓa Lorca
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She likes to read, she reads all the time, and she prefers to be reading several things at once, she says it gives endless perspective and dimension.
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Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal, #1))
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For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.
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Ray Bradbury
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The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.
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E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)
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When you fall in love with a work of art, youβd die to meet the artist. I am a student of the galleries of Pacific sunsets, full moon rises on the ocean, the clouds from an airplane, autumn forests in Raleigh, first fallen snows.
And Iβm dying to meet the artist.
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Yasmin Mogahed
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You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
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Pablo Neruda (The Captain's Verses)
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Suatu kali hidup melambungkanmu setinggi langit,kali lainnya hidup menghempaskanmu begitu keras ke bumi
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Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
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There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
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AndrΓ© Gide (Autumn Leaves)
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And, what's more, this 'precious' body, the very same that is hooted and honked at, demeaned both in daily life as well as in ever existing form of media, harrassed, molested, raped, and, if all that wasn't enough, is forever poked and prodded and weighed and constantly wrong for eating too much, eating too little, a million details which all point to the solitary girl, to EVERY solitary girl, and say: Destroy yourself.
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time
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Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.
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Samuel Johnson (The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia)
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I do not have OCD OCD OCD.
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Emilie Autumn
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My reasons to live
Were my reasons to die
But at least they were mine
Now I've freedom unbound
Cut the laces of life
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Emilie Autumn
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I smile to myself knowing that they may be dead.
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Emilie Autumn
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I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
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Pablo Neruda (If You Forget Me)
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I was reading everything under the sun from music history to feminist literature to Shakespeare, which is why I'm not a complete idiot at this time.
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Emilie Autumn
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There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything thatβs a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that donβt fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everythingβs quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleepβthen they appear.
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Tove Jansson (Moominland Midwinter (The Moomins, #6))
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The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
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Henry Beston
β
For this freedom
I have given all I had
For this darkness
I gave my light
For this wisdom
I have lost my innocence
Take my petals
And cover me with the night
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Emilie Autumn
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The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
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J.D. Salinger (A Girl I Knew)
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Or maybe spring is the season of love and fall the season of mad lust. Spring for flirting but fall for the untamed delicious wild thing.
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Elizabeth Cohen (The Hypothetical Girl)
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Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be
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Emilie Autumn
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The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.
The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
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Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
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Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.
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Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal, #1))
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The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumnβs ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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Why should I wake when I'm half past dead?
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Emilie Autumn
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Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?
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John B. Tabb
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Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.
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Henry Rollins
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Sekarang... Saat ini saja... Untuk beberapa detik saja... aku ingin bersikap egois. Aku ingin melupakan semua orang, mengabaikan dunia, dan melupakan asal-usul serta latar belakangku. Tanpa beban, tuntutan, atau harapan, aku ingin mengaku.
Aku mencintainya.
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Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
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The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.
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Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
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And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky (White Nights)
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Apakah ada yang tahu bagaimana rasanya mencintai seseorang yang tidak boleh dicintai? Aku tahu.
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Ilana Tan (Autumn in Paris)
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Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportian suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lovers's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favourite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.
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Truman Capote (Other Voices, Other Rooms)
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A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.
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FranΓ§ois-RenΓ© de Chateaubriand (MΓ©moires d'Outre-Tombe)
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If you're going to die, then die. If you are going to live, then fight.
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Emilie Autumn
β
The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.
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Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
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AUTUMNAL
Pale amber sunlight falls across
The reddening October trees,
That hardly sway before a breeze
As soft as summer: summer's loss
Seems little, dear! on days like these.
Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time's deceit.
Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.
Beyond the pearled horizons lie
Winter and night: awaiting these
We garner this poor hour of ease,
Until love turn from us and die
Beneath the drear November trees.
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β
Ernest Dowson (The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson)
β
Perhaps ...
To R.A.L.
Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel one more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of you.
Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet,
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.
Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.
But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.
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β
Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth)
β
He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.
But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.
There would be no spring. ("The October Game")
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β
Ray Bradbury (Long After Midnight)
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Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens and the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars.
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β
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
β
How does one hate a country, or love one?... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is the love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.
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β
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4))
β
The moon is fat, but half of her is missing. A ruler-straight line divides her dark side from her light. She hangs low over the bustling Castro, noticeably earlier than the night before. Autumn is coming. For as long as I can remember, Iβve talked to the moon. Asked her for guidance. Thereβs something deeply spiritual about her pale glow, her cratered surface, her waxing and waning. She wears a new dress every evening, yet sheβs always herself.
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β
Stephanie Perkins (Lola and the Boy Next Door (Anna and the French Kiss, #2))
β
I can explain myself: If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street. Iβm not joking. Youβve been told to look both ways before crossing the street, and the sidewalk is your friend, right? Wrong. Iβve spent years walking sidewalks at night. Iβve looked around me when it was dark, when there were men following me, creeping out of alleyways, attempting to goad me into speaking to them and shouting obscenities at me when I wouldnβt, and I suddenly realised that the only place left to go was the middle of street. But why would I risk it? Because the odds are in my favour. In the States, someone is killed in a car accident on average every 12.5 minutes, while someone is raped on average every 2.5 minutes. Even when factoring in that, one, I am generously including ALL car-related accidents and not just those involving accidents, and two, that the vast majorities of rapes still go unreported [β¦] And, thus, this is now the way I live my life: out in the open, in the middle of everything, because the middle of the street is actually the safest place to walk.
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death
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β
Lin Yutang
β
Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me."
"I promise," I say.
Behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her."
The whole world closes around me, like an eyelid: For a moment, everything goes dark.
I am falling. My ears are full of rushing; I have been sucked into a tunnel, a place of pleasure and chaos. My head is about to explode.
He looks different. He is much thinner, and a scar runs from his eyebrow all the way down to his jaw. On his neck, just behind his left ear, a small tattooed number curves around the three-pronged scar that fooled me, for so long, into believing he was cured. His eyes-once a sweet, melted brown, like syrup-have hardened. Now they are stony, impenetrable.
Only his hair is the same: that auburn crown, like leaves in autumn.
Impossible. I close my eyes and reopen them: the boy from a dream, from a different lifetime. A boy brought back from the dead.
Alex.
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β
Lauren Oliver (Pandemonium (Delirium, #2))
β
I can't get it out," she said.
"Just pull at it."
"It hurts. It's throbbing."
"Pull harder."
"I can't! It's truly stuck. I need something to make it slippery. Do you have some sort of lubricant nearby?"
"No."
"Not anything?"
"Much as it may surprise you, we've never needed lubricant in the library before now.
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β
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
β
...I became aware of the world's tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated.
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β
Vladimir Nabokov
β
October's Party
October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
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β
George Cooper
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I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.
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Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3))
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When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
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Thomas Merton
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Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.
Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.
And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.
Donβt leave now that youβre hereβ
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.
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Faiz Ahmad Faiz (100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz: 1911-1984)
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And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire? I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you."
The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut trees nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp, musky smell of his body next to mine.
"Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed."
"That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose.
"No," he said. "That's faith.
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Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
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The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won't find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.
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Tove Jansson (Moominvalley in November (The Moomins, #9))
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The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.
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Helen Bevington (When Found, Make a Verse of)
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Daylight...In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas.
It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yeard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.
It was fall and his children fought ont he sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triymph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive.
Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog.
Summer, and he watched his children's heart break.
Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.
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Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
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Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with overmindfulness of self.
Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.
And life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.
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Kahlil Gibran (The Garden of The Prophet)
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After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth...The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her...In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
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Elizabeth George Speare (The Witch of Blackbird Pond)
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I love the Autumn,
And yet I cannot say
All the thoughts and things
That make me feel this way.
I love walking on the angry shore,
To watch the angry sea;
Where summer people were before,
But now there's only me.
I love wood fires at night
That have a ruddy glow.
I stare at the flames
And think of long ago.
I love the feeling down inside me
That says to run away
To come and be a gypsy
And laugh the gypsy way.
The tangy taste of apples,
The snowy mist at morn,
The wanderlust inside you
When you hear the huntsman's horn.
Nostalgia - that's the Autumn,
Dreaming through September
Just a million lovely things
I always will remember.
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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
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Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth.
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Fernando Pessoa (The Education of the Stoic)
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I know what it feels like, and it sucks, it really does, when you are up in the middle of the night thinking about the things that you've suddenly became aware of. The things you're missing out on right now, and all the people who are not close to you anymore, and all of the good times that will never happen again, and all the people who have meant the world to you who have forgotten about you forever, and you get this awful feeling that's kind of like a mix between loneliness and nostalgia.
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Abraham M. Alghanem (Summer and Autumn)
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You know,β she said dreamily, passing over his question, βyouβre not nearly as handsome as Lord St.Vincent.β
βThereβs a surprise,β he said dryly.
βBut for some reason,β she continued, βI never want to kiss him the way I do you.β It was a good thing that she had closed her eyes, for if she had seen his expression, she might not have continued. βThere is something about you that makes me feel terribly wicked. You make me want to do shocking things. Maybe itβs because youβre so proper. Your necktie is never crooked, and your shoes are always shiny. And your shirts are so starchy. Sometimes when I look at you, I want to tear off all your buttons. Or set your trousers on fire.
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Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
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Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.
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Shauna Niequist (Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way)
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What are you doing?β I tried to pull away, but his hand slipped from my hair to cup the nape of my neck.
When he whispered, his warm breath brushed over my lips. βJust let me kiss you, Calla. You donβt know how long Iβve wanted to. No one has to know.β
My lips parted as I drew a sudden, startled breath and in that instant his mouth was on mine, soft as velvet. I closed my eyes against the rush of a hundred wings that suddenly beat in my chest and soared through my body.
His scent was all around me. Leather, sandalwood, bonfires in autumn. He pulled back, but only for the sake of moving his lips to trail over my neck.
My blood was on fire and I was shaking. Is this really happening?
I couldnβt stop thinking about Shay in the clearing. About asking him to kiss me. The electric touch of his lips on mine.
But this is where I belong. I tried to push the memories back.
Ren stroked my knee, his fingers wandering up my thigh, sliding beneath the hem of my dress.
I grabbed his wrist. βWait.β
He didnβt free his arm from my grasp but continued kissing my collar bone.
βLetβs skip the waiting part,β he murmured into my skin.
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Andrea Cremer (Nightshade (Nightshade, #1; Nightshade World, #4))
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GATHERING LEAVES
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?
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Robert Frost
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One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, "We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life."
The Fog Horn blew.
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Ray Bradbury (The Fog Horn (Classics Stories of Ray Bradbury))
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When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
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Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
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Look back, hold a torch to light the recesses of the dark. Listen to the footsteps that echo behind, when you walk alone.
All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.
Each ghost comes unbidden from the misty grounds of dream and silence.
Our rational minds say, "No, it isn't."
But another part, an older part, echoes always softly in the dark, "Yes, but it could be.
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Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
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Live. And Live Well.
BREATHE. Breathe in and Breathe deeply.
Be PRESENT. Do
not be past. Do not be future. Be now.
On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day,
roll down the windows and
FEEL the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of
the sun.
If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to
FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.
Get knee-deep in a novel
and LOSE track of time.
If you bike, pedal HARDER and if you crash then crash
well.
Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done-a paper well-written, a project
thoroughly completed, a play well-performed.
If you must wipe the snot from your
3-year old's nose, don't be disgusted if the Kleenex didn't catch it all
because soon he'll be wiping his own.
If you've recently experienced loss, then
GRIEVE. And Grieve well.
At the table with friends and family, LAUGH.
If you're
eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke.
And if you eat, then SMELL.
The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on
the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven.
And TASTE.
Taste every ounce of flavor.
Taste every ounce of friendship.
Taste every ounce of Life.
Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift.
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Kyle Lake
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I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't, and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling. I'm tired of the vitriol. I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of the meanness. I'm tired of selfishness. I'm tired of how we're doing nothing to stop it. I'm tired of how we're encourageing it. I'm tired of the violence that's on it's way, that's coming, that hasn't happened yet. I'm tired of liars. I'm tired of sanctified liars. I'm tired of how those liars have let this happen. I'm tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring whether they're being lied to anymore. I'm tired of being made to feel this fearful.
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Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal, #1))
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If I could live again my life,
In the next β Iβll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I wonβt try to be so perfect,
Iβll be more relaxed,
Iβll be more full β than I am now,
In fact, Iβll take fewer things seriously,
Iβll be less hygienic,
Iβll take more risks,
Iβll take more trips,
Iβll watch more sunsets,
Iβll climb more mountains,
Iβll swim more rivers,
Iβll go to more places β Iβve never been,
Iβll eat more ice creams and less lima beans,
Iβll have more real problems β and less imaginary ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives -
each minute of his life,
Of course that I had moments of joy β but,
if I could go back Iβll try to have only good moments,
If you donβt know β thatβs what life is made of,
Donβt lose the now!
I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umbrella and without a parachute,
If I could live again β I will travel light,
If I could live again β Iβll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
Iβll ride more carts,
Iβll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live β but now I am 85,
- and I know that I am dying β¦
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Jorge Luis Borges
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In art, in history man fights his fears, he wants to live forever, he is afraid of death, he wants to work with other men, he wants to live forever. He is like a child afraid of death. The child is afraid of death, of darkness, of solitude. Such simple fears behind all the elaborate constructions. Such simple fears as hunger for light, warmth, love. Such simple fears behind the elaborate constructions of art. Examine them all gently and quietly through the eyes of a boy. There is always a human being lonely, a human being afraid, a human being lost, a human being confused. Concealing and disguising his dependence, his needs, ashamed to say: I am a simple human being in a too vast and complex world. Because of all we have discovered about a leaf...it is still a leaf. Can we relate to a leaf, on a tree, in a park, a simple leaf: green, glistening, sun-bathed or wet, or turning white because the storm is coming. Like the savage, let us look at the leaf wet or shining with sun, or white with fear of the storm, or silvery in the fog, or listless in too great heat, or falling in autumn, dying, reborn each year anew. Learn from the leaf: simplicity. In spite of all we know about the leaf: its nerve structure phyllome cellular papilla parenchyma stomata venation. Keep a human relation -- leaf, man, woman, child. In tenderness. No matter how immense the world, how elaborate, how contradictory, there is always man, woman, child, and the leaf. Humanity makes everything warm and simple. Humanity...
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AnaΓ―s Nin (Children of the Albatross (Cities of the Interior #2))
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I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves - not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?
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Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They're a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting "Hey!" in time to that damned songβthey're all charged with magic.
My magic comes from the same places. And maybe from darker places than that. Fear is an emotion, too. So is rage. So is lust. And madness. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no Charles Manson or anything, but I'm not going to be up for canonization either. Though in the past, I think maybe I was a better person than I am today. In the past I hadn't seen so many people hurt and killed and terrorized by the same kind of power that damn well should have been making the world a nicer place, or at the least staying the hell away from it. I hadn't made so many mistakes back then, so many shortsighted decisions, some of which had cost people their lives. I had been sure of myself. I had been whole.
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Jim Butcher (Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7))
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Want your boat, Georgie?' Pennywise asked. 'I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.' He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore.
Yes, sure,' George said, looking into the stormdrain.
And a balloon? Iβve got red and green and yellow and blue...'
Do they float?'
Float?' The clownβs grin widened. 'Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And thereβs cotton candy...'
George reached.
The clown seized his arm.
And George saw the clownβs face change.
What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.
They float,' the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held Georgeβs arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches.
They float,' it growled, 'they float, Georgie, and when youβre down here with me, youβll float, tooβ'
George's shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rain-slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly.
Everything down here floats,' that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more.
Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only forty-five seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street...and began to scream himself as George's body turned over in his hands. The left side of Georgeβs slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where his left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth.
The boyβs eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, they began to fill with rain.
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Stephen King (It)
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Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when Clary had first been there. It had a stark grandeur in the winter: the mountains rose in the distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lace-like patterns against the bright sky.
Sometimes Jace would slow the horse to point out the manor houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his shoulders tense as they passed one that nearly melded with the forest around it: it had clearly been burned and rebuilt. Some of the stones still bore the black marks of smoke and fire. βThe Blackthorn manor,β he said. βWhich means that around this bend in the road is β¦β He paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante β Clary could see the demon towers in the distance β while the other curled down toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a low wall. β β¦ the Herondale manor,β Jace finished.
The wind picked up; icy, it ruffled Jaceβs hair. Clary had her hood up, but he was bare-headed and bare-handed, having said he hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the reins in his hands. βDid you want to go and look at it?β she asked.
His breath came out in a white cloud. βIβm not sure.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
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Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
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David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
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She's locked up with a spinning wheel
She can't recall what it was like to feel
She says, "This room's gonna be my grave
And there's no one who can save me,"
She sits down to her colored thread
She knows lovers waking up in their beds
She says, "How long can I live this way
Is there someone I can pay to let me go
'Cause I'm half sick of shadows
I want to see the sky
Everyone else can watch as the sun goes down
So why can't I
And it's raining
And the stars are falling from the sky
And the wind
And the wind I know it's cold
I've been waiting
For the day I will surely die
And it's here
And it's here for I've been told
That I'll die before I'm old
And the wind I know it's cold...
She looks up to the mirrored glass
She sees a horse and rider pass
She says, "This man's gonna be my death
'Cause he's all I ever wanted in my life
And I know he doesn't know my name
And that all the girls are all the same to him
But still I've got to get out of this place
'Cause I don't think I can face another night
Where I'm half sick of shadows
And I can't see the sky
Everyone else can watch as the tide comes in
So why can't I
But there's willow trees
And little breezes, waves, and walls, and flowers
And there's moonlight every single night
As I'm locked in these towers
So I'll meet my death
But with my last breath I'll sing to him I love
And he'll see my face in another place,"
And with that the glass above
Her cracked into a million bits
And she cried out, "So the story fits
But then I could have guessed it all along
'Cause now some drama queen is gonna write a song for me,"
She went down to her little boat
And she broke the chains and began to float away
And as the blood froze in her veins she said,
"Well then that explains a thing or two
'Cause I know I'm the cursed one
I know I'm meant to die
Everyone else can watch as their dreams untie
So why can't I
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincolnβs Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes β gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one anotherβs umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little βprentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time β as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincolnβs Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
β
β
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
β
Did you know sometimes it frightens me--
when you say my name and I can't see you?
will you ever learn to materialize before you speak?
impetuous boy, if that's what you really are.
how many centuries since you've climbed a balcony
or do you do this every night with someone else?
you tell me that you'll never leave
and I am almost afraid to believe it.
why is it me you've chosen to follow?
did you like the way I look when I am sleeping?
was my hair more fun to tangle?
are my dreams more entertaining?
do you laugh when I'm complaining that I'm all alone?
where were you when I searched the sea
for a friend to talk to me?
in a year where will you be?
is it enough for you to steal into my mind
filling up my page with music written in my hand
you know I'll take the credit for I must have made you come to me somehow.
but please try to close the curtains when you leave at night,
or I'll have to find someone to stay and warm me.
will you always attend my midnight tea parties--
as long as I set it at your place?
if one day your sugar sits untouched
will you have gone forever?
would you miss me in a thousand years--
when you will dry another's tears?
but you say you'll never leave me
and I wonder if you'll have the decency
to pass through my wall to the next room
while I dress for dinner
but when I'm stuck in conversation
with stuffed shirts whose adoration
hurts my ears,
where are you then?
can't you cut in when I dance with other men?
it's too late not to interfere with my life
you've already made me a most unsuitable wife
for any man who wants to be the first his bride has slept with
and you can't just fly into people's bedrooms
then expect them to calmly wave goodbye
you've changed the course of history
and didn't even try
where are you now--
standing behind me,
taking my hand?
come and remind me
who you are
have you traveled far
are you made of stardust too
are the angels after you
tell me what I am to do
but until then I'll save your side of the bed
just come and sing me to sleep
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
Here you sit on your high-backed chair
Wonder how the view is from there
I wouldn't know 'cause I like to sit
Upon the floor, yeah upon the floor
If you like we could play a game
Let's pretend that we are the same
But you will have to look much closer
Than you do, closer than you do
And I'm far too tired to stay here anymore
And I don't care what you think anyway
'Cause I think you were wrong about me
Yeah what if you were, what if you were
And what if I'm a snowstorm burning
What if I'm a world unturning
What if I'm an ocean, far too shallow, much too deep
What if I'm the kindest demon
Something you may not believe in
What if I'm a siren singing gentlemen to sleep
I know you've got it figured out
Tell me what I am all about
And I just might learn a thing or two
Hundred about you, maybe about you
I'm the end of your telescope
I don't change just to suit your vision
'Cause I am bound by a fraying rope
Around my hands, tied around my hands
And you close your eyes when I say I'm breaking free
And put your hands over both your ears
Because you cannot stand to believe I'm not
The perfect girl you thought
Well what have I got to lose
And what if I'm a weeping willow
Laughing tears upon my pillow
What if I'm a socialite who wants to be alone
What if I'm a toothless leopard
What if I'm a sheepless shepherd
What if I'm an angel without wings to take me home
You don't know me
Never will, never will
I'm outside your picture frame
And the glass is breaking now
You can't see me
Never will, never will
If you're never gonna see
What if I'm a crowded desert
Too much pain with little pleasure
What if I'm the nicest place you never want to go
What if I don't know who I am
Will that keep us both from trying
To find out and when you have
Be sure to let me know
What if I'm a snowstorm burning
What if I'm a world unturning
What if I'm an ocean, far too shallow, much too deep
What if I'm the kindest demon
Something you may not believe in
What if I'm a siren singing gentlemen to sleep
Sleep...
Sleep...
β
β
Emilie Autumn